I suspect that they are not complete idiots and therefore there must be a reason for choosing those hours that they felt outweighed the numerical benefit of having it when more Americans could participate. The most obvious answer to me would be that it's during normal working hours for them.

I know probably everything regarding GW2 Beta has already been recorded and put up on youtube, but I am still gonna capture some stuff for the fun of it. Any requests? I know for certain I am going to record some of the character creation stuff just for my own edification...and maybe some of the crafting.

I know probably everything regarding GW2 Beta has already been recorded and put up on youtube, but I am still gonna capture some stuff for the fun of it. Any requests? I know for certain I am going to record some of the character creation stuff just for my own edification...and maybe some of the crafting.

No special requests, but did want to say belated thanks for the last vids. The second one of you just talking while doing the starter area quests made my palms itch more than anything I've seen so far. Reminded me of WoW open beta when I had no fucking clue what was going on.

I have golf league on Mondays. Hopefully I can get in a few hours of play between that and bed though. I missed the first beta, so I'm pretty eager to make sure I can at least get a couple hours in on this one.

I don't know the primary markets for the game, outside of US and EU is there anyone other than Aus/NZ that is a sizable market?

Most games have the US as the main market, a much smaller number of players in Europe, and then scattered people everywhere else. Asia is a different story, but the laws, restrictions, and cultural differences mean that you can't really launch the same game over there or share users.

I know probably everything regarding GW2 Beta has already been recorded and put up on youtube, but I am still gonna capture some stuff for the fun of it. Any requests? I know for certain I am going to record some of the character creation stuff just for my own edification...and maybe some of the crafting.

Some people have expressed frustrations about ANet "going dark" after the beta was over. Here is a few paragraphs from Mike O'Brien. Not much, but some insight into how they feel about the beta so far and what's coming.

edit - spoilered for the WebSensed amoung you.

Spoiler: show

The other week we hosted our first Beta Weekend Event, when hundreds of thousands of players who pre-purchased Guild Wars 2 got their first chance to play the game. This was a huge milestone for ArenaNet; with no NDAs and no press embargoes, the beta version of Guild Wars 2 would have to stand on its own before the full force of the Internet.

I think it’s safe to say that the response was overwhelming in more ways than one. Firstly, the number of people who pre-purchased the game far exceeded our expectations, and we had to temporarily disable pre-purchases. In the end that wasn’t enough, and even with 48 worlds we didn’t have enough server capacity to meet the huge demand.

Fortunately, the vast majority of players were able to get into the game and experience Guild Wars 2 in all its glory. Seeing Tyria come alive, with players interacting with dynamic events or engaging in epic World vs. World battles, was an amazing experience. We’ve highlighted some of the great coverage coming out of the Beta Weekend in another blog post, but suffice it say that we were blown away by the reaction from the community. The positive feedback just strengthens our resolve to deliver the best game possible.

This was definitely a real beta, designed to find problems, gather player input, and learn what work still needs to be done before we ship the game. We’ve listened to your feedback and we’re making some important improvements to the game for the next Beta Weekend Event.

At the same time, we’re also working on server capacity to make sure that we’re prepared for the even greater flood of players who will participate in the next Beta. To that end, we’ve announced a Stress Test on Monday May 14th to test some changes we’ve implemented. This 7-hour test event, which runs from 11 AM to 6 PM PDT (-7 GMT) is open to all players who have pre-purchased Guild Wars 2. The good news is that we’re not wiping characters for this test; we’re using the same build that we used in the first Beta Weekend Event, so you’ll be able to pick up right where you left off. For more information about the Stress Test, log in to the Beta Forums. Please join us on May 14 if you can.

I want to thank each and every one of you for your support—every time you participate in our test events you help make the game better. We’ll see you in-game!

I think it’s safe to say that the response was overwhelming in more ways than one. Firstly, the number of people who pre-purchased the game far exceeded our expectations, and we had to temporarily disable pre-purchases. In the end that wasn’t enough, and even with 48 worlds we didn’t have enough server capacity to meet the huge demand.

Assuming this is true, that's pretty impressive that they had to suspend prepurchasing just because they had too many people trying to get into the beta lol.

I don't know if I thought that it started at 11PM PDT or what.... but there's no way in hell that I'll make beta. Why would they choose such a terrible time? Honestly, like any other game, the higher player populations come anywhere from around 6pm to 2am eastern. That basically spans hours where all of North America that work days are off. That's disappointing.

In the end that wasn’t enough, and even with 48 worlds we didn’t have enough server capacity to meet the huge demand.

I don't see that as the big problem, the difficulty in getting groups all in the same place was what has me worried long term. The nature of MMOs mean that the servers will be overloaded at launch and underpopulated later, it's how they handle it that matters.

Also, how do these MMOs keep getting "surprised" by the interest? I wasn't even paying attention to GW2 until a day or so before the beta weekend, and I could have told you it was going to be huge.

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Seems to cover the transition between EU peak and US peak, perhaps what they wanted.

Maybe, but as far as stress testing goes, EU is pretty irrelevant. If the servers can handle US primetime then they can handle EU primetime. Honestly, this sounds like lazy timing, just so the Areananet people won't have to stay at work late. It's probably fine if they just want to smoke test a new build, but that's not really a stress test.

I'm really at a lost as to why people think that a stress test requires them to test during US prime time. I'm quite certain that they can stress test what they need to with a fraction of the available testers. Do you really think they need to fill up 48 worlds to properly do a stress test? I'm sure the backend can be "stress tested" just fine during the time they picked.

I'm really at a lost as to why people think that a stress test requires them to test during US prime time. I'm quite certain that they can stress test what they need to with a fraction of the available testers. Do you really think they need to fill up 48 worlds to properly do a stress test? I'm sure the backend can be "stress tested" just fine during the time they picked.

Silly person. You think this is about a stress test? No, this is to taunt us once again with a tiny taste of gameplay so that we will sit here seething in our own geeky angst with renewed vigor about when the next beta weekend will be.

Do you really think they need to fill up 48 worlds to properly do a stress test?

If it's really a stress test, then yes. They can scale down the hardware and test in-house if they want a small scale test. The whole point of public stress tests is usually to catch those issues that only show up when your whole system is running as close to capacity as you can push it, and to see how it fails when you go too far. There are all kinds of issues that won't show up with just one server getting hit hard. Plus, they aren't wiping, so people will be really spread out.

Do you really think they need to fill up 48 worlds to properly do a stress test?

If it's really a stress test, then yes. They can scale down the hardware and test in-house if they want a small scale test. The whole point of public stress tests is usually to catch those issues that only show up when your whole system is running as close to capacity as you can push it, and to see how it fails when you go too far. There are all kinds of issues that won't show up with just one server getting hit hard. Plus, they aren't wiping, so people will be really spread out.

You're making some assuptions about both their system archetecture and the amount of servers they intend to launch with. Depending on how all of this is actually put together they could run with a subset and still have the results they need. It depends really which systems they are trying to stress.

I don't see that as the big problem, the difficulty in getting groups all in the same place was what has me worried long term. The nature of MMOs mean that the servers will be overloaded at launch and underpopulated later, it's how they handle it that matters.

I think it's pretty unlikely that they won't implement "join party leader" functionality that would allow people to get together and put them in the same instance when they zone. I could see not allowing you to choose an instance from a list, however, as overflow is meant to be an ephemeral alternative to queues, not something semi-persistent like Aion's (or Tera's?) channels that you can bounce between to find uncrowded areas.

Xavin wrote:

Also, how do these MMOs keep getting "surprised" by the interest? I wasn't even paying attention to GW2 until a day or so before the beta weekend, and I could have told you it was going to be huge.

Could you have put an accurate number on "huge"? Because, for this purpose, actual numbers are what matter. They clearly expected a lot of interest given the 48 worlds, though, it just turned out to be more than the number for which they planned/budgeted.

Do you really think they need to fill up 48 worlds to properly do a stress test?

If it's really a stress test, then yes. They can scale down the hardware and test in-house if they want a small scale test. The whole point of public stress tests is usually to catch those issues that only show up when your whole system is running as close to capacity as you can push it, and to see how it fails when you go too far. There are all kinds of issues that won't show up with just one server getting hit hard. Plus, they aren't wiping, so people will be really spread out.

Ahh, so there is only kind of stress test? Or more accurately one kind of public stress test? Good to know. Is that because there is only one kind of stress? Throughput? Concurrency? Latency? Or?

Xavin wrote:

There are all kinds of issues that won't show up with just one server getting hit hard. Plus, they aren't wiping, so people will be really spread out.

Ahh, so what you are saying is that their architecture is 1-to-1? So I always go to my server when I login for instance? Or travel from one area to another? How quaint. And that 48 worlds equals 48 servers? I wonder if they could put 48 worlds on 12 servers? Maybe they are really ingenious and are using that fancy new fangled clustering with load balancing technology and can dynamically distribute and allocate hardware resources. And maybe, they are trying to track down an issue involving one server getting hit hard that didn't show up in internal testing but did during the beta weekend. Maybe the planets of our solar system are aligned better on that day during that time. Maybe one of the developers was sick during the beta weekend and just wants to see the game in action with players.

Maybe a bunch of key personnel and the "people who write the checks" will be there Monday and expect to see a dog-and-pony show. That would certainly classify it as a stress test.

You have no idea what they are testing or the requirements to satisfy that testing.

I think it's pretty unlikely that they won't implement "join party leader" functionality that would allow people to get together and put them in the same instance when they zone.

Hopefully, although I have learned to not just assume some game feature is coming because it makes sense.

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I could see not allowing you to choose an instance from a list, however, as overflow is meant to be an ephemeral alternative to queues, not something semi-persistent like Aion's (or Tera's?) channels that you can bounce between to find uncrowded areas.

I think that's going to be one of their toughest problems to fix. The way the quests and events work, they need a medium amount of people in the zone. Not too few and not too many. That doesn't align well with traditional monolithic servers. Overflow seems like a good way to manage it without queues, but then you have the question of why have monolithic servers at all if you can't be playing with the same people all the time? I don't know what they plan on doing with those issues. Channels at least provide a choice, you can go to the overcrowded area, or go to the low pop ones, depending on what you wanted.

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You have no idea what they are testing or the requirements to satisfy that testing.

*shrug* Calling it a stress test implies they want maximum concurrent users. That time window will not give them the maximum possible. For about the fifth time in the thread, they are the ones that chose to name it a "stress" test. They could have called it whatever they wanted, I'm just going off of what they called it.

This is compounded by ArenaNet’s plan to update the game with a live team [PC Gamer]. New events will just pop into existence without any warning. Patch notes will not herald the fact that perhaps the Queensdale Brood Mother event frequency has been halved and replaced with, I don’t know, a skale stampede running towards the smell of fresh baked apple pies. Man-with-the-plan Colin Johanson says in the PC Gamer interview:

“Our goal is that every time you make a new character, you might go back through a map that you played six months ago and you’re going to find completely different content.” New content, he says, will be spread across the whole game rather than concentrated in specific areas. As this happens, the events already in place will be altered to accommodate it.

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Maybe a year from now all the Risen across Tyrian zones will begin to wane as more and more players defeat Zhaitan and the army of Bubbles, the Elder Sea Dragon arises from the depths. Or perhaps the Blood Legion gets uppity and easily aggitated creating a new type of renegade to deal with in Ascalon.

Of course - who knows what this will turn out doing, but I think it is a nice/interesting idea.

Also, how do these MMOs keep getting "surprised" by the interest? I wasn't even paying attention to GW2 until a day or so before the beta weekend, and I could have told you it was going to be huge.

Exactly how huge, though? Especially when limiting the number of beta players to people who have put down the full price of the game before it even has a release date announced? 48 servers is a pretty large amount of capacity, and it's not like the servers were limited to small amounts of population- there were hordes of people everywhere I went. It's obvious they expected a lot of interest, but they were likely unprepared for how many people would actually purchase a game this early without a release date or any sort of non-NDA'd coverage outside of press previews.

I'm more interested to see how things play in the next event once they've rolled out more capacity and hopefully fixed some of the issues that plagued the last event. I didn't have many problems myself, other than being unable to log in for an hour or two on Saturday, but I know that a lot of other people were having lag issues as well as bad performance problems. The next event should hopefully show us how well and how fast they're actually fixing those issues.

This is compounded by ArenaNet’s plan to update the game with a live team [PC Gamer]. New events will just pop into existence without any warning. Patch notes will not herald the fact that perhaps the Queensdale Brood Mother event frequency has been halved and replaced with, I don’t know, a skale stampede running towards the smell of fresh baked apple pies. Man-with-the-plan Colin Johanson says in the PC Gamer interview:

“Our goal is that every time you make a new character, you might go back through a map that you played six months ago and you’re going to find completely different content.” New content, he says, will be spread across the whole game rather than concentrated in specific areas. As this happens, the events already in place will be altered to accommodate it.

Quote:

Maybe a year from now all the Risen across Tyrian zones will begin to wane as more and more players defeat Zhaitan and the army of Bubbles, the Elder Sea Dragon arises from the depths. Or perhaps the Blood Legion gets uppity and easily aggitated creating a new type of renegade to deal with in Ascalon.

Of course - who knows what this will turn out doing, but I think it is a nice/interesting idea.

They made an attempt at this in GW1 also. Since most of the game was max-level, there was a very large area in-which you could add stuff and the majority of players would be able to experience it. I felt like it was really successful, so I was disappointed when instead of dropping leveling entirely they moved from 20 to 80. Instead they went with down-leveling to match content, which I still have somewhat mixed feelings about, but it should make the entire game playable and fun for a max level character and give them a lot of room to play with new content.

I think it's pretty unlikely that they won't implement "join party leader" functionality that would allow people to get together and put them in the same instance when they zone.

Hopefully, although I have learned to not just assume some game feature is coming because it makes sense.

Quote:

I could see not allowing you to choose an instance from a list, however, as overflow is meant to be an ephemeral alternative to queues, not something semi-persistent like Aion's (or Tera's?) channels that you can bounce between to find uncrowded areas.

I think that's going to be one of their toughest problems to fix. The way the quests and events work, they need a medium amount of people in the zone. Not too few and not too many. That doesn't align well with traditional monolithic servers. Overflow seems like a good way to manage it without queues, but then you have the question of why have monolithic servers at all if you can't be playing with the same people all the time? I don't know what they plan on doing with those issues. Channels at least provide a choice, you can go to the overcrowded area, or go to the low pop ones, depending on what you wanted.

Quote:

You have no idea what they are testing or the requirements to satisfy that testing.

*shrug* Calling it a stress test implies they want maximum concurrent users. That time window will not give them the maximum possible. For about the fifth time in the thread, they are the ones that chose to name it a "stress" test. They could have called it whatever they wanted, I'm just going off of what they called it.

The test parameters imply a lot more than the descriptor. You seem to be hung up on what they are saying or more importantly comparing what they are saying to what other developers said? SWTOR said they were doing a stress test and performed the test with certain parameters (maximum concurrent users). So when ANet announces a stress test it means they are using the same parameters?

I know you have said "they said" multiple times. I don't think their words mean what you think they mean.

Monday's stress test draws ever nearer. We want to thank you in advance for helping us test Guild Wars 2. How can you best help with the test? Well, our first Beta Weekend Event gave us a mountain of great feedback about gameplay, and our developers are hard at work on that aspect.

Rather than game play feedback, the goal for the stress test is to gather technical feedback. We want you to rush the servers and crowd into Tyria, and you’ll probably come across connectivity and performance problems. Be patient as you help our team find those bugs. Again, thanks in advance for helping us chase those out and crush them for good!

To give you even more to look forward to, this charr guardian is waiting to give you a "friendly welcome." Good luck! ~RB2

I could see not allowing you to choose an instance from a list, however, as overflow is meant to be an ephemeral alternative to queues, not something semi-persistent like Aion's (or Tera's?) channels that you can bounce between to find uncrowded areas.

I think that's going to be one of their toughest problems to fix. The way the quests and events work, they need a medium amount of people in the zone. Not too few and not too many. That doesn't align well with traditional monolithic servers. Overflow seems like a good way to manage it without queues, but then you have the question of why have monolithic servers at all if you can't be playing with the same people all the time? I don't know what they plan on doing with those issues. Channels at least provide a choice, you can go to the overcrowded area, or go to the low pop ones, depending on what you wanted.

Thinking about overflow, guesting and how each zone is separated, I wouldn't be surprised if the underlying software/hardware architecture was similar to GW1 and the monolithic servers were only logical divisions implemented primarily for WvW.